Areas of Expertise

Andrew Barr is a paleoecologist and paleoanthropologist whose research focuses on understanding the environmental and ecological context of early human evolution. He conducts fieldwork in the Afar region of Ethiopia with the Mille-Logya Research Project.

He received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation explored the paleoenvironments of the Omo Shungura Formation by reconstructing the locomotor ecology of fossil bovids (antelopes) found alongside early hominins. Results from this research point to major environmental changes in the Shungura Formation during the period from 2.8 – 2.5 Ma, a critical interval immediately preceding the origin of genus Homo.

Andrew has an interest in refining existing methods for reconstructing paleoenvironments. His ecomorphological research incorporates 3D morphometric techniques and phylogenetic comparative methods to improve functional inferences. He is a member of the NSF funded PaleoCore initiative which aims to develop digital infrastructure and a data-standard for paleoanthropology. He is also interested in quantitative statistical methods, and is an experienced programmer in R and Python.